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Top Chinese AI Researchers Leave OpenAI for Meta in Global Talent Battle

  • tech360.tv
  • Jul 1
  • 2 min read

Meta Platforms has hired four top Chinese researchers from OpenAI, intensifying the global race for artificial intelligence talent.


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Credit: META

Zhao Shengjia, Ren Hongyu, Yu Jiahui and Bi Shuchao have joined Meta’s AI team, according to a report by The Information and confirmed in part by Alexandr Wang, head of Meta’s AI unit, in a social media post over the weekend.


Wang, formerly CEO of Scale AI, expressed excitement about working with the new hires on advancing toward superintelligence.


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Credit: REUTERS

The move comes as Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to invest heavily in AI, reportedly offering bonuses of up to USD 100 million to attract top engineers, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.


Earlier in June, Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI for USD 14.2 billion to bring Wang into the company.


The four researchers have yet to update their social media profiles, which still list OpenAI as their employer.


All four share similar academic paths, having completed undergraduate studies at top Chinese universities before pursuing graduate education in the United States.


Zhao graduated from Tsinghua University in 2016 and later studied computer science at Stanford University. He joined OpenAI in 2022 as a technical staff member.


Ren earned his bachelor’s degree from Peking University in 2018 and studied at Stanford from 2018 to 2023. He interned at Nvidia, Google and Apple, and contributed to OpenAI’s o1 and o3-mini models, as well as GPT-4o.


Yu graduated from the School of the Gifted Young at the University of Science and Technology of China and earned a doctorate in computer science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He led OpenAI’s Perception team and previously worked at DeepMind on the Gemini large language model.


Bi graduated from Zhejiang University and earned a master’s in statistics and a doctorate in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined OpenAI in May 2024 as head of multimodal post-training after serving as a tech lead manager at Google from 2013 to 2019.


Meta also recently added Trapit Bansal, another former OpenAI researcher, to its AI superintelligence team, along with Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Zhai Xiaohua from OpenAI’s Zurich office.


The recruitment underscores the growing global recognition of Chinese talent in AI development.


US chipmaker Nvidia also recently hired two Chinese AI experts, Zhu Banghua and Jiao Jiantao, both Tsinghua alumni. They announced their new roles on social media alongside photos with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

  • Meta hires four top Chinese AI researchers from OpenAI

  • New hires include contributors to GPT-4o and OpenAI’s Perception team

  • Meta reportedly offering bonuses up to USD 100 million to attract talent


Source: SCMP

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